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Other Vehicles, More Casualties

Dozens of other vehicles suffered either direct rocket hits or were hit by shrapnel. Eyewitnesses told many horror stories of burned out, crushed or otherwise damaged passenger cars, mini vans and other vehicles and passengers missing heads and limbs.

Forty-two-year-old “Marta Yandarova” (not her real name), traveling with her sister and nephew, decided not to hide in the field during the attack but to keep on driving, hoping to escape the site of the attack as quickly as possible. She describes some of the vehicles mentioned above but also many others.

We were driving on the road when my nephew said to me: “Look what they’re doing! They’re bombing the road.” I looked at the road – there was smoke. That was in front of us.... The plane bombed the road and flew away. And we found the people who they had shot at. There was a truck, that had been targeted. It stood on the road.... I saw a man lying there, everything on top of him, his arm hanging about. That was on the left side, on the right side there was a passenger car, there were children as well, a dead body, I don’t know, a woman lying there, children screaming and walking around [the body]. We drove past this scene.⁵⁴

“Marta’s” sister “Asya Yandarova” described what she saw next to the truck that had turned over:

On the right hand side...there were three crushed passenger cars. One car had a dead body in it. In [another] car I didn’t see any people, they’d apparently been taken out, but the car was smashed, and around it was a puddle of blood.⁵⁵

Fifty-two-year-old Lida Alpatova, a cook, was in a hospital in Ingushetia recovering from shrapnel wounds when interviewed by Human Rights Watch. She and her husband left their home in the Zavadskoi district of Grozny on October 29 to go to Ingushetia. When they arrived at Shaami Yurt, they saw several planes and hid under a small bridge:

We stayed under the bridge for fifteen minutes, and then the planes left. As everything was quiet and there were no more planes, my husband said he would go and turn on the car, and told me that as soon as I heard the ignition I should come and run to the car. When I heard that the car was on, I ran toward it. I don’t know what happened but that is when I was injured. Something fell right next to me, I don’t know what it was.... My husband said there was a big crater next to me after the explosion. My husband was thrown six or seven meters by the blast, and was in shock. I was taken by a passing car to Urus Martan hospital.⁵⁶

“Aibi Sulumov” (not his real name) was on a bus when the attack started. He said he saw the following:

...a Gazel [a small truck] was thrown onto the shoulder of the road under a tree by the blast.... They bombed ahead of us, there were many wounded there. Only the windows [of our bus] broke.... We all jumped out of the bus, which immediately stopped from shrapnel. The driver was also spared, although his ear was almost ripped off. A piece of shrapnel went through one guy’s arm and out. There were some small injuries.... A car, I think a ZIL, suffered a direct hit. It was full of domestic goods, it drove back [to Grozny] with us. It was turned over.⁵⁷

Malika Musaieva, a forty-one year old agronomist, said her car with three passengers was caught in the bombing:

... we saw the planes and I asked my brother to stop the car and get out.... The driver left the car on his side, and my neighbor and I got out on the right side of the car. I saw the planes dropping bombs straight onto the road. One of the bombs fell next to a brown Zhiguli [common Russian car]. The driver of the Zhiguli and the woman in the back seat were killed. I also saw one bus and a Gazel burning.⁵⁸

Another woman said she saw a car (a Deviatka) with a beheaded driver behind the steering wheel.⁵⁹